On April 28th, 2008 Tohono O'odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris Jr. gave testimony to the Subcommittee on Fisheries Wildlife and Oceans and Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands of the House Committee on Natural Resources at their Oversight Hearing “Walls and Waivers: Expedited Construction of the Southern Border Wall and Collateral Impacts to Communities and the Environment.”

At the start of his testimony to the House Committee, Tohono O'odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris began as follows:

"The Tohono O’odham Nation is negatively impacted by the border...We are older than the international boundary with Mexico and had no role in creating the border. But our land is now cut in half, with O’odham communities, sacred sites, salt pilgrimage routes, and families divided. We did not cross the 75 miles of border within our reservation lands. The border crossed us. And the border comes at a price."

Chairman Norris went on to explain that the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol, in their hurry to construct the border wall, had violated the trust of the Tohono O'odham Nation and had committed crimes against O'odham culture and the natural environment.

In one particular instance, Norris described how burial grounds were destroyed by Boeing and others during their work on the Border Wall construction:

"When Environmental Assessments were conducted on ancestral O’odham lands between Naco and Douglas, archaeological sites were identified within the border construction zone. During an October 2007 field visit to the Christiansen Ranch site, Site AZ FF:9:10, fragments of human remains were observed in the tire tracks of the heavy construction equipment. Barriers and the border road now cross the site.

Imagine a bulldozer parking in your family graveyard, turning up bones. This is our reality."